Under the leadership of Historian and Research Manager Dr Zachary Gorman, the Robert Menzies Institute is spearheading a range of important research into Robert Menzies’s career, beliefs, and legacy, as well as the enduring impact of the Menzies era in shaping modern Australia.

The Institute’s annual academic conference, which takes place in November each year, attracts historians, authors and other leading figures to look at Menzies with fresh eyes. The 2023 conference featured 17 presenters, including Paul Kelly, Anne Henderson, and Senator Andrew Bragg, alongside a number of highly talented historians. The Institute’s next book, The Menzies Ascendency, will be based on the edited papers from this conference and will be released in December this year.

The 2024 conference on ‘The Final Chapter: Purpose, Endurance and Legacy, 1961-1966 and Beyond’, is scheduled for 23-24 November and promises to deliver another stellar set of insights into the Menzies era.

Beyond our flagship conferences, we currently have a wide variety of research projects either underway or in development. These cover topics ranging from Menzies’s wartime radio broadcasts, the Menzies’s Government’s landmark investment in democratising university education via Commonwealth Scholarships, a new grassroots history of the founding of the Liberal Party, a poetry anthology, and the future of the two-party system.